First and foremost let me say that what you get out of a movie like this is largely what you bring into it. Watching a movie is, or should be, an interactive experience, like listening to music. Have you ever imagined your own music video while listening to a song? That music video may not be what the songwriter imagined, and may even contradict the lyrics in some way. A movie can be much the same.
Much of the criticism I've read appears to be based on either philosophical disagreement (fair enough) or troubleseeking (fairness is irrelevant). By the latter I mean that some people seem to have gone into the movie with the desire to look for flaws rather than actually watch the movie.
In any case, one of the worrying points I've noticed is the tendency to distort memory to favor the argument. In the Times article, for example, Mr. Rothstein "quotes" Morpheus telling Neo to regard "all of the inhabitants of the virtual world as enemies that may be killed; anyway, most people are not ready for the truth."
I think I could fairly characterize that statement as mendacious, and possibly slanderous (as far as it is possible to "slander" a fictional character). While I myself am somewhat dissapointed with the lack of ethical discussion of killing those deceived by or under the control of the machines, Morpheus quite clearly does not teach Neo that anyone still connected to the machine IS an enemy and may be disposed of - he tells Neo that anyone still connected to the machine may be used by the machine, and thus is potentially dangerous.
This is one example of a common event. Misperceptions, misquotes, and misremembered scenes unfortunately have a life of their own, and I feel uncomfortably like a costumed Trekkie sitting here correcting one.
But it does make the point that what you get out of the film (like anything) depends on what you bring to it. That being said, not all films are worth seeing. Some are simply poorly made, or their topics don't interest you, whatever the reason.
I suppose the popularity of the films has something to do with it, but there seems to be more than one reason that we have Christians, Islamists, Buddhists, and Hindus claiming the film as their own (or reviling it). And we have political liberals and conservatives fighting over it as well. And philosophy majors alternately reveling in and resenting it.
What that says to me is that, like the original, this film has succeeded at convincing a lot of people in the audience, of varying faiths, philosophies and club memberships, that it had something important to say to them. To that I say "Job Well Done."
As to Corporate Mofo (great analysis, BTW), I certainly hope cassocks become a fashion trend, they rock! Unfortunately they primarily suit skinny people...:) I'll probably lean towards Morpheus' "3-piece" look (loved the armbands - there's probably a term for these, but I can't find any fashion dictionaries for men's clothes!).
Religion (as opposed to religion) is a very interesting subject. Theology is essentially about the relationship of the mind to the universe, and an attempt to apply the former to the latter without understanding the in-between.
As such it is a shortcut, and as shortcuts tend, it sometimes arrives at the right place, sometimes the wrong.
Speaking as a relatively Gnostic generalist who does not "belong to a faith" but is rather interested in finding out what is going on, it seems that we roughly agree that a human being has free will, and can make decisions.
If there is no "other," then that is our nature and as it serves us we use it to improve ourselves.
If there is a "God" and we are a deliberate creation then it would seem that the will of that "creator" includes that we have free will - in which case the conclusion of the above paragraph also holds true.
Same path, different reasons.
I understand your disdain for "religion" that consists of men with power telling others what the "will of God" is. I simply do not believe my efforts to change that will be well-rewarded.
I would rather seek to understand the universe and, if it is the creation of a "God," then I will be closer to understanding that as well.
Science is a process. I do not believe that process is necessarily foreign to a theologer, and psychologer, or a physicist by the nature of that field, though many members of those fields, whatever their faith or lack thereof, seem to misunderstand the process.
I do not believe the concepts of "science" and "faith" are opposed or incompatible. Belief in God does not harm the practice of science unless you use that belief to convince yourself to falsify data - and I believe most incarnations of "God" have something particular to say about deceit.
In short, I believe that hostility to religion per se is wasted energy.
To equate all faith to the control of the masses is rather like equating all medical research to biowarfare research.
If you are bothered by religion, you will be bothered a great deal. You can either seek offense at it, or swim past it. Don't worry about it.
This message is for those who are either religious or irreligious and find themselves offended by the other.
On the other hand, if Martin Reese was at your window with a bullhorn trying to convert you, then you are right to be offended. If that is the case, I apologize for intruding in the conversation.
I say these things largely because, in my teens, I was what you might call an "Atheist Fundamentalist." In other words, from my doubt of religion flowed a certain rudeness and a desire to get my word in on the subject wherever possible.
For the most part, such things do not bother me now. You might say I have mellowed (few would believe you).
P.S. I am glad you have faith that there is a logical explanation. I do as well.
I wonder what the historical relationship between the economy and low-end entertainment (movies, CDs, similar) is? Is the entertainment industry recession-resistant? I know during the 1929 depression it wasn't, but since then?
I'm no fan of stealing, but hard times is certainly an excuse people use (should I say justification?).
I keep hoping that some well-run online song-for-song "rights buying" project comes up, maybe subscribing to a whole catalog? Verification is a problem, but I personally would pay a moderate amount for downloadable music, especially on a song-by-song basis.
I recognize both the interests of the artists and the argument that the industry rips off both the artist and the customer.
I suppose this is going to be another long, drawn-out social drama, especially with politicians involved.
There's an awful lot of astroturf around here lately.
Could we please get a separate "Segway" topic icon so I can filter these things out?
Yeah, I know, I don't have to read them. But they take up space that more useful things could fill, like news on EEG research on people wathcing grass grow, or the latest Kool-Aid related college prank.
Individualists, real ones, at their core, do not wish to control others, or to be controlled.
Using laws, government, force to make others change their lives is an attack on this ideal.
European ideals tend toward communitarianism, which is not particularly "left" or "right," it is more interested in control than ideology.
And science is a process, not a destination. You would do well to take your own advice to heart.
I personally prefer the age-old bargain, you stay off my yard and I'll stay off yours. It's not always as simple as that, but it avoids a high percentage of the kinds of disputes we find ourselves in here.
The revolution will not start over cars, or land, or guns. It will start over control.
I believe that this kind of conflict can be avoided by people accepting that other people don't have to do what we want.
Unfortunately, history is not very kind to this particular belief of mine.
I think, as usual, the recycling problem will be solved by human ingenuity (some call it greed). We're getting awfully close to the point where "mining" old landfills for material is becoming cost-effective.
Eventually our descendants will treat landfills like we treat salt or gold mines. Well, more like salt. They mark them, mine them, then cover them up until the next material crunch.
Capitalism is honest exhange between buyer and seller, each concerned with their own best interest. If the customer is "forced to suffer," it ain't capitalism.
This, unfortunately, is what mixed markets are all about.
If this is done openly, honestly, not slipped into every package without a choice, then it will fail, and die, just like the old CircuitCity/DIVX concept.
If it is slipped into the whole product stream, we can only hope that it doesn't make it into the recordable stream, or that we have a better storage method soon.
This is the key. This will be done, and probably soon. Probably randomly, maybe 50% of the discs at first, CDs, DVDs.
How would you tell, unless there was a leak, an informant? And a credible one, with proof?
And how long before this tech gets into the recordable disc stream? Might the blank disc makers start using this to sell more discs? Might some of this material be included late in the process to make discs that fail randomly on small portions of the surface? As sabotage, perhaps?
The worst part of any conspiracy theory is when you discover that it is true.
#1: This article forever embeds in my mind the image of geeky engineers who conduct a 6-month series of experiments in 9 countries to see if the coriolis force really does control the direction of water flow in toilets, and when they get back they don't even realize they just traveled around the world and looked at nothing but the inside of hotel toilets. These cars are dorky.
#2: Brake-by-wire: Never in My Car. I am not going to have some engineer with a lawyer looking over my shoulder and "correcting" my braking technique. Say I come around a mountain corner and see a truck backing onto the road. I have to heel-and-toe threshhold brake while turning around the vehicle and keeping an eye on oncoming traffic and the computer decides I meant "stop as fast as possible" and I get hit by the truck. NO.
#3: Yes, the RX-8 rocks. The suspension design is magic, but dorks hate the car for some reason. I think it has too few useless gadgets that get in the way of the driving experience. There's somebody at Mazda who loves Ferraris, I guess.
#4: Hybrid performance cars: Go ahead and light up those tires. That'll guarantee I'll outrun you as you waste energy melting rubber. Traction, weight. Maybe someday, guys. More power to ya.
Just about every gadget they mentioned is either something I could do without (what idiot gets into their car without looking in the back seat?), or a positive danger (anything that overrides the driver). I want a car designed by a driver, not an engineer.
And as cool as turbodiesels are, diesel is noxious.
1) NASA is the DMV of space travel. Go visit the DMV. You'll see what I mean.
We don't need a huge bureaucracy that makes more money from its failures than from its successes. We don't need a huge bureaucracy.
2) Complexity isn't why we need thousands of cross-checking engineers, thousands of cross-checking engineers is why we need complexity.
We don't need hundreds of tons of crap to get into orbit. We do need hundreds of tons of crap to make the job so big that only NASA can do it. I honestly believe that if NASA disappeared overnight (let's get those other astronauts down first, however), someone would be making money doing it faster, better, and cheaper within two years. A lot of people want to do it now, but when it's a government game, there's only one game in town.
And you have to know what the game is if you want to win. And we should want to win, since the prize is survival.
3) As to the "falling from orbit in an ablading pod" idea, that is way cool.
#2 Why did humans "have to leave" and why didn't they come back?
#3 Why does this look like a subtle ad for the game "Impossible Creatures?" Does anyone actually think that sometime in the next few million years an Elephant, a turtle and a rhinoceros will interbreed?
#4 Why do these so-called scientists apparently believe that intelligence is a survival trait that A) doesn't work and B) won't find its way to the top of the food chain?
#5 Why the radical changes in the particular species that have remained largely (fundamentally) unchanged for aeons (sharks, squid, insects, etc), and a tailing off of the most radically advancing species (mammals)?
#6 What do they have against mammals anyway?
#7 Why couldn't they just admit it's a speculative head-party instead of the website taglines like "it could happen... it will happen."
1. Regarding the "why the inefficient battery" thing, not that the article said something about "differences of opinions" between the machines, older, larger, slower machines and newer, more ruthless machines? Some interesting thoughts occur, since the older machines were also made by men (and thus perhaps had hardwired instructions to protect humans which was twisted to the "humangardening" in the Matrix...).
Or maybe they're using unused human processing cycles to calculate pi to 3.8x10^34 digits.
2. I have no problem with catsuits and guns. I just hope they don't have cops thumb-cocking Glocks the second time around.
3. I don't know that fans of HK actions movies saw anything really new - just the most refined version so far. And the best excuse so far for those superhuman action feats. The sense of style was great.
But the really cool thing is I saw hardwired Commies and John Birchers coming out of The Matrix believing that the themes really spoke to them... can you say universal human concerns and stories? I really hope they continue with that kind of theme and don't try to get blatanty political in the next two movies, or they'll likely lose half their audience.
To all those who think the reliability concerns are absurd:
1) How many watches, microwave electronic boards, and car computers sit within a few inches of an assembly that contains repeated, violent chemical explosions and metal-fatiguing heat-cycles from room-temperature or below to hundreds of degrees in seconds? Not to mention the acceleration.
If the car computers of today were mounted between the cylinders and exhaust manifold, they would fail a lot more often.
2) If your watch battery fails, you don't generally die.
Even the best sidearms are not perfectly reliable now. Good engineering and simplicity enhances reliability. Added complexity will not help.
To all the people who don't understand why "we" think we need these tools - I pray you never have to worry about it. For myself, I have not come to this decision easily, but I have come to it.
It is hard for me to imagine people these days believing that submission is safer than fighting. Some people take different lessons from events than others, I suppose.
Smart, huh?
on
Smart Mobs
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· Score: 2, Insightful
1. Given the historical behavior of mobs (generic term), I'm not so keen on upgrading them. More or less unavoidable, I guess, but anyone who's unpopular (or very popular) will have to hide much of the time - anyone who sees you can "call for backup" to anyone else who doesn't (or does) like you... and 300 people are known to do crazy things that 3 people would never try.
2. There are a lot of good things about this as well. If there are enough social impediments to people "mobbing" too much, then the good things (emergency communications, realtime local news, local problem-solving) could become a real boon for a lot of people, with the added benefit of solving simple, local problems (from traffic jams to minor flooding, etc) without 43 layers of bureaucrats. Think of realtime volunteer community work, or for that matter realtime local volunteer entertainment.
3. Some kind of "reputation system" would be cool for that kind of thing. i.e. "John Thomas," a totally unknown person says a bomb went off in the capitol, so you ignore it because the source isn't reliable. "Joe Cool," a well-known and reliable source, says there's an accident on highway 50 blocking traffic so you take the next exit.
4. So, bad, good, indifferent. Don't know how it will turn out. Will probably have one, may never turn it on.
What? No one is starting a flame war on what turntable is best? The $300 DJ turntable versus the $2000 diamond/granite signed-by-some-music-geek model? No comments about how you could do this in Linux? No analog-digital math wars?
No comments about how DJ turntables are "like a beowulf cluster?"
What are you people thinking! This is/.! This isn't ABC news!
Convert all web pages to accessible formats, convert all books (ever) to audio books, redesign pedestrian access for the sightless...
or put money into researching artificial eyes.
I honestly wonder which would be cheaper?
There is a real problem with spending all of your time accomodating a problem rather than fixing it.
I used to work with hearing-impaired people (have forgotten most of my ASL), there was a definite "subculture" atmosphere that really didn't spend any time caring about a cure, some of them (not all) just wanted other people to do the work for them.
Not to say that there should be no accomodation, there are no guarantees after all. But the problem with ADA and other such "devices" is that, like farm subsidies or AFDC, you can build a culture of entitlement that masks the problem instead of solving it.
If someone has the power of life or death (metaphorically or literally), then those they have power over will seek to influence them. No matter how many rules, regulations, or how much more power you give that person or persons.
Just about every solution I hear involves more restrictions on specific cases of influence. Maybe you ban donations, so they donate indirectly. Then you ban indirect donations, so they form PACs. Then you ban PACs, so they hire 10,000 people to march with signs or whatever.
The core of the problem is the concentration of power. When the U.S. Constitution was written, it wasn't worth buying a politician because they really couldn't do much for you.
Pretty much every election since, the power of the politicians and appointed bureaucrats has been increasing.
Not that we ever had a Golden Age, but we've gone from the land of free speech to the land where you can go to jail for saying "prohibited words" in a private conversation in a public place. Weve gone from a land of entrepreneurs to a land where you can get busted for "hairdressing without a license."
If I still owned a business, I'd be desperate for an ally within the government that had the power to shut me down or put me in jail for any of thousands of violations or regulations that would take me ten years just to read.
I'm frankly scared that we're getting to the point that life becomes so uncertain and dangerous for anyone who actually tries to do anything interesting that no one will try to do anything interesting anymore except for bureaucrats and criminals. How many more laws will it take, or have we got enough for that already?
A couple of levels of irony here. Not only has this person's home address been posted here, not only have those posts been modded up, not only have people posted suggestions for harassment, assault, and murder of said person for the crime of "making money while being very annoying and probably wasting resources," which have also been modded up, but to ice the cake, we also see posts about how amoral businessmen are!
It's a beautiful day for hypocracy, A beautiful day for hypocracy, Won't you be an accomplice?
Maybe this guy Deserves to Lose, at least financially. But if some wacko kills his family, I hope you realize you helped.
Now, to be honest, the chances of someone killing a "spam king" are remote. Wackos generally have more important things to worry about.
Butr it's still pretty pathetic behavior, and the most pathetic part is the relative lack of "and lack of modding of) objections.
Come on, guys. The "spam your congressman" stuff is cool, the "hack away the spam" stuff is cool, the "somebody murder this guy" stuff is ++ uncool.
Okay, so posit for a moment a Logitech wireless keyboard with hacked hardware and firmware and boosted range, and a spotting scope.
Park yourself outside of an office, or for that matter several offices, and "try out" some computers some night.
A parabolic antenna might help some?
Now, how do you counter this kind of intrusion, apart from only using wired keyboards?
Perhaps if Logitech started using the kind of tech in 2GHz phones with frequency hopping and/or scrambling? Possibly even something simpler like a frequency change periodically based on an encrypted "handshake" like modern car alarms?
How about simple "exclusive" communications - each keyboard contains a unique identifier (which would then probably be used to track you over the net:), which would "poll" the PC periodically and re-establish its identity. Which would cause all kinds of havoc if you switched keyboards or someone duped your code.
There is an answer here... somewhere... apart from not keeping anything worth stealing.:)
(Keep a PC by the window hooked to the net with a wireless keyboard and tons of pr0n on the HD...)
I think the basic problem here is what always happens everywhere and everywhen:
A bunch of clever people build something cool. Other people appreciate that.
But not everyone is happy. The clever people apply some cool fixes, and even more people are now into the cool idea.
But not everyone is happy. Now so many unhappy people are involved, the clever people are outnumbered. Sometimes the clever people defensively form an organization. Sometimes the unhappy people form an organization.
It doesn't matter, because within a few years, the unhappy people are running the organization, because that's what unhappy people do. Happy people don't generally find it neccessary, and clever people can't put up with it for long.
So now we find ourselves facing the gradual end of the wild and free Internet we know and love (through this and many other means).
The "What do we do" question is the important one now. If anyone has a more permanent meeting place to discuss this, post it here. Perhaps we need to start building another "common infrastructure" voluntarily alongside the existing one. I admit I have a lot to learn about this.
Anyone here remember fidoNet? No reason we couldn't do it again. I could afford to donate some time and a couple of machines. Who's up for it?
Slashdot Mirror
First and foremost let me say that what you get out of a movie like this is largely what you bring into it. Watching a movie is, or should be, an interactive experience, like listening to music. Have you ever imagined your own music video while listening to a song? That music video may not be what the songwriter imagined, and may even contradict the lyrics in some way. A movie can be much the same.
Much of the criticism I've read appears to be based on either philosophical disagreement (fair enough) or troubleseeking (fairness is irrelevant). By the latter I mean that some people seem to have gone into the movie with the desire to look for flaws rather than actually watch the movie.
In any case, one of the worrying points I've noticed is the tendency to distort memory to favor the argument. In the Times article, for example, Mr. Rothstein "quotes" Morpheus telling Neo to regard "all of the inhabitants of the virtual world as enemies that may be killed; anyway, most people are not ready for the truth."
I think I could fairly characterize that statement as mendacious, and possibly slanderous (as far as it is possible to "slander" a fictional character). While I myself am somewhat dissapointed with the lack of ethical discussion of killing those deceived by or under the control of the machines, Morpheus quite clearly does not teach Neo that anyone still connected to the machine IS an enemy and may be disposed of - he tells Neo that anyone still connected to the machine may be used by the machine, and thus is potentially dangerous.
This is one example of a common event. Misperceptions, misquotes, and misremembered scenes unfortunately have a life of their own, and I feel uncomfortably like a costumed Trekkie sitting here correcting one.
But it does make the point that what you get out of the film (like anything) depends on what you bring to it. That being said, not all films are worth seeing. Some are simply poorly made, or their topics don't interest you, whatever the reason.
I suppose the popularity of the films has something to do with it, but there seems to be more than one reason that we have Christians, Islamists, Buddhists, and Hindus claiming the film as their own (or reviling it). And we have political liberals and conservatives fighting over it as well. And philosophy majors alternately reveling in and resenting it.
What that says to me is that, like the original, this film has succeeded at convincing a lot of people in the audience, of varying faiths, philosophies and club memberships, that it had something important to say to them. To that I say "Job Well Done."
As to Corporate Mofo (great analysis, BTW), I certainly hope cassocks become a fashion trend, they rock! Unfortunately they primarily suit skinny people...
I find it refreshing, in an unsettling way, that a post that includes the words "fucking" and "cuntfaces" can be modded "4, Insightful."
It's nice to know that Slashdot is still a place where we can express ourselves freely. I'm sure glad that PBS takeover fell through.
Religion (as opposed to religion) is a very interesting subject. Theology is essentially about the relationship of the mind to the universe, and an attempt to apply the former to the latter without understanding the in-between.
As such it is a shortcut, and as shortcuts tend, it sometimes arrives at the right place, sometimes the wrong.
Speaking as a relatively Gnostic generalist who does not "belong to a faith" but is rather interested in finding out what is going on, it seems that we roughly agree that a human being has free will, and can make decisions.
If there is no "other," then that is our nature and as it serves us we use it to improve ourselves.
If there is a "God" and we are a deliberate creation then it would seem that the will of that "creator" includes that we have free will - in which case the conclusion of the above paragraph also holds true.
Same path, different reasons.
I understand your disdain for "religion" that consists of men with power telling others what the "will of God" is. I simply do not believe my efforts to change that will be well-rewarded.
I would rather seek to understand the universe and, if it is the creation of a "God," then I will be closer to understanding that as well.
Science is a process. I do not believe that process is necessarily foreign to a theologer, and psychologer, or a physicist by the nature of that field, though many members of those fields, whatever their faith or lack thereof, seem to misunderstand the process.
I do not believe the concepts of "science" and "faith" are opposed or incompatible. Belief in God does not harm the practice of science unless you use that belief to convince yourself to falsify data - and I believe most incarnations of "God" have something particular to say about deceit.
In short, I believe that hostility to religion per se is wasted energy.
To equate all faith to the control of the masses is rather like equating all medical research to biowarfare research.
We each have our own lessons from life, however.
Best of luck in your endeavors.
Yes, I knew about the Apple-only service. Like a Asia-only car, it is of academic interest at the moment.
Should it become more generally avialable and have good service terms, Good. Same for the rebirth of Napster.
I followed this link, and what do I find?
Cheat codes and Easter Eggs for The Real World! That is Way Cool. Cuspy, even.
I don't suppose you have any links to money and employment-related cheat codes, would you? :)
Much peace and satisfaction to the one who pointed me at this Really Cool Thing. Thanks, droopus!
Interesting.
If you are bothered by religion, you will be bothered a great deal. You can either seek offense at it, or swim past it. Don't worry about it.
This message is for those who are either religious or irreligious and find themselves offended by the other.
On the other hand, if Martin Reese was at your window with a bullhorn trying to convert you, then you are right to be offended. If that is the case, I apologize for intruding in the conversation.
I say these things largely because, in my teens, I was what you might call an "Atheist Fundamentalist." In other words, from my doubt of religion flowed a certain rudeness and a desire to get my word in on the subject wherever possible.
For the most part, such things do not bother me now. You might say I have mellowed (few would believe you).
P.S. I am glad you have faith that there is a logical explanation. I do as well.
I wonder what the historical relationship between the economy and low-end entertainment (movies, CDs, similar) is? Is the entertainment industry recession-resistant? I know during the 1929 depression it wasn't, but since then?
I'm no fan of stealing, but hard times is certainly an excuse people use (should I say justification?).
I keep hoping that some well-run online song-for-song "rights buying" project comes up, maybe subscribing to a whole catalog? Verification is a problem, but I personally would pay a moderate amount for downloadable music, especially on a song-by-song basis.
I recognize both the interests of the artists and the argument that the industry rips off both the artist and the customer.
I suppose this is going to be another long, drawn-out social drama, especially with politicians involved.
There's an awful lot of astroturf around here lately.
Could we please get a separate "Segway" topic icon so I can filter these things out?
Yeah, I know, I don't have to read them. But they take up space that more useful things could fill, like news on EEG research on people wathcing grass grow, or the latest Kool-Aid related college prank.
Individualists, real ones, at their core, do not wish to control others, or to be controlled.
Using laws, government, force to make others change their lives is an attack on this ideal.
European ideals tend toward communitarianism, which is not particularly "left" or "right," it is more interested in control than ideology.
And science is a process, not a destination. You would do well to take your own advice to heart.
I personally prefer the age-old bargain, you stay off my yard and I'll stay off yours. It's not always as simple as that, but it avoids a high percentage of the kinds of disputes we find ourselves in here.
The revolution will not start over cars, or land, or guns. It will start over control.
I believe that this kind of conflict can be avoided by people accepting that other people don't have to do what we want.
Unfortunately, history is not very kind to this particular belief of mine.
I can just see an industry-funded movie about a race to get some meaningless thing done before the DVD expires.
Actually, more like a 48-hour scavenger hunt with clues on the expiring DVD.
Which no one will buy because who wants a DVD that self-destructs?
In a year, there will be cases of hundreds of unopened expiring DVDs one sale on eBay for the cost of delivery.
I hope.
I think, as usual, the recycling problem will be solved by human ingenuity (some call it greed). We're getting awfully close to the point where "mining" old landfills for material is becoming cost-effective.
Eventually our descendants will treat landfills like we treat salt or gold mines. Well, more like salt. They mark them, mine them, then cover them up until the next material crunch.
It will all work out in the end.
Capitalism is honest exhange between buyer and seller, each concerned with their own best interest. If the customer is "forced to suffer," it ain't capitalism.
This, unfortunately, is what mixed markets are all about.
If this is done openly, honestly, not slipped into every package without a choice, then it will fail, and die, just like the old CircuitCity/DIVX concept.
If it is slipped into the whole product stream, we can only hope that it doesn't make it into the recordable stream, or that we have a better storage method soon.
This is the key. This will be done, and probably soon. Probably randomly, maybe 50% of the discs at first, CDs, DVDs.
How would you tell, unless there was a leak, an informant? And a credible one, with proof?
And how long before this tech gets into the recordable disc stream? Might the blank disc makers start using this to sell more discs? Might some of this material be included late in the process to make discs that fail randomly on small portions of the surface? As sabotage, perhaps?
The worst part of any conspiracy theory is when you discover that it is true.
#1: This article forever embeds in my mind the image of geeky engineers who conduct a 6-month series of experiments in 9 countries to see if the coriolis force really does control the direction of water flow in toilets, and when they get back they don't even realize they just traveled around the world and looked at nothing but the inside of hotel toilets. These cars are dorky.
#2: Brake-by-wire: Never in My Car. I am not going to have some engineer with a lawyer looking over my shoulder and "correcting" my braking technique. Say I come around a mountain corner and see a truck backing onto the road. I have to heel-and-toe threshhold brake while turning around the vehicle and keeping an eye on oncoming traffic and the computer decides I meant "stop as fast as possible" and I get hit by the truck. NO.
#3: Yes, the RX-8 rocks. The suspension design is magic, but dorks hate the car for some reason. I think it has too few useless gadgets that get in the way of the driving experience. There's somebody at Mazda who loves Ferraris, I guess.
#4: Hybrid performance cars: Go ahead and light up those tires. That'll guarantee I'll outrun you as you waste energy melting rubber. Traction, weight. Maybe someday, guys. More power to ya.
Just about every gadget they mentioned is either something I could do without (what idiot gets into their car without looking in the back seat?), or a positive danger (anything that overrides the driver). I want a car designed by a driver, not an engineer.
And as cool as turbodiesels are, diesel is noxious.
1) NASA is the DMV of space travel. Go visit the DMV. You'll see what I mean.
We don't need a huge bureaucracy that makes more money from its failures than from its successes. We don't need a huge bureaucracy.
2) Complexity isn't why we need thousands of cross-checking engineers, thousands of cross-checking engineers is why we need complexity.
We don't need hundreds of tons of crap to get into orbit. We do need hundreds of tons of crap to make the job so big that only NASA can do it. I honestly believe that if NASA disappeared overnight (let's get those other astronauts down first, however), someone would be making money doing it faster, better, and cheaper within two years. A lot of people want to do it now, but when it's a government game, there's only one game in town.
And you have to know what the game is if you want to win. And we should want to win, since the prize is survival.
3) As to the "falling from orbit in an ablading pod" idea, that is way cool.
I'm on for that one, when do we leave?
#1 What do these people have against mammals?
#2 Why did humans "have to leave" and why didn't they come back?
#3 Why does this look like a subtle ad for the game "Impossible Creatures?" Does anyone actually think that sometime in the next few million years an Elephant, a turtle and a rhinoceros will interbreed?
#4 Why do these so-called scientists apparently believe that intelligence is a survival trait that A) doesn't work and B) won't find its way to the top of the food chain?
#5 Why the radical changes in the particular species that have remained largely (fundamentally) unchanged for aeons (sharks, squid, insects, etc), and a tailing off of the most radically advancing species (mammals)?
#6 What do they have against mammals anyway?
#7 Why couldn't they just admit it's a speculative head-party instead of the website taglines like "it could happen... it will happen."
#8 Did I mention that mammals rule?
signed, a mammal
1. Regarding the "why the inefficient battery" thing, not that the article said something about "differences of opinions" between the machines, older, larger, slower machines and newer, more ruthless machines? Some interesting thoughts occur, since the older machines were also made by men (and thus perhaps had hardwired instructions to protect humans which was twisted to the "humangardening" in the Matrix...).
Or maybe they're using unused human processing cycles to calculate pi to 3.8x10^34 digits.
2. I have no problem with catsuits and guns. I just hope they don't have cops thumb-cocking Glocks the second time around.
3. I don't know that fans of HK actions movies saw anything really new - just the most refined version so far. And the best excuse so far for those superhuman action feats. The sense of style was great.
But the really cool thing is I saw hardwired Commies and John Birchers coming out of The Matrix believing that the themes really spoke to them... can you say universal human concerns and stories? I really hope they continue with that kind of theme and don't try to get blatanty political in the next two movies, or they'll likely lose half their audience.
To all those who think the reliability concerns are absurd:
1) How many watches, microwave electronic boards, and car computers sit within a few inches of an assembly that contains repeated, violent chemical explosions and metal-fatiguing heat-cycles from room-temperature or below to hundreds of degrees in seconds? Not to mention the acceleration.
If the car computers of today were mounted between the cylinders and exhaust manifold, they would fail a lot more often.
2) If your watch battery fails, you don't generally die.
Even the best sidearms are not perfectly reliable now. Good engineering and simplicity enhances reliability. Added complexity will not help.
To all the people who don't understand why "we" think we need these tools - I pray you never have to worry about it. For myself, I have not come to this decision easily, but I have come to it.
It is hard for me to imagine people these days believing that submission is safer than fighting. Some people take different lessons from events than others, I suppose.
1. Given the historical behavior of mobs (generic term), I'm not so keen on upgrading them. More or less unavoidable, I guess, but anyone who's unpopular (or very popular) will have to hide much of the time - anyone who sees you can "call for backup" to anyone else who doesn't (or does) like you... and 300 people are known to do crazy things that 3 people would never try.
2. There are a lot of good things about this as well. If there are enough social impediments to people "mobbing" too much, then the good things (emergency communications, realtime local news, local problem-solving) could become a real boon for a lot of people, with the added benefit of solving simple, local problems (from traffic jams to minor flooding, etc) without 43 layers of bureaucrats. Think of realtime volunteer community work, or for that matter realtime local volunteer entertainment.
3. Some kind of "reputation system" would be cool for that kind of thing. i.e. "John Thomas," a totally unknown person says a bomb went off in the capitol, so you ignore it because the source isn't reliable. "Joe Cool," a well-known and reliable source, says there's an accident on highway 50 blocking traffic so you take the next exit.
4. So, bad, good, indifferent. Don't know how it will turn out. Will probably have one, may never turn it on.
What? No one is starting a flame war on what turntable is best? The $300 DJ turntable versus the $2000 diamond/granite signed-by-some-music-geek model? No comments about how you could do this in Linux? No analog-digital math wars?
/.! This isn't ABC news!
No comments about how DJ turntables are "like a beowulf cluster?"
What are you people thinking! This is
(this is only half-joke)
Convert all web pages to accessible formats, convert all books (ever) to audio books, redesign pedestrian access for the sightless...
or put money into researching artificial eyes.
I honestly wonder which would be cheaper?
There is a real problem with spending all of your time accomodating a problem rather than fixing it.
I used to work with hearing-impaired people (have forgotten most of my ASL), there was a definite "subculture" atmosphere that really didn't spend any time caring about a cure, some of them (not all) just wanted other people to do the work for them.
Not to say that there should be no accomodation, there are no guarantees after all. But the problem with ADA and other such "devices" is that, like farm subsidies or AFDC, you can build a culture of entitlement that masks the problem instead of solving it.
If someone has the power of life or death (metaphorically or literally), then those they have power over will seek to influence them. No matter how many rules, regulations, or how much more power you give that person or persons.
Just about every solution I hear involves more restrictions on specific cases of influence. Maybe you ban donations, so they donate indirectly. Then you ban indirect donations, so they form PACs. Then you ban PACs, so they hire 10,000 people to march with signs or whatever.
The core of the problem is the concentration of power. When the U.S. Constitution was written, it wasn't worth buying a politician because they really couldn't do much for you.
Pretty much every election since, the power of the politicians and appointed bureaucrats has been increasing.
Not that we ever had a Golden Age, but we've gone from the land of free speech to the land where you can go to jail for saying "prohibited words" in a private conversation in a public place. Weve gone from a land of entrepreneurs to a land where you can get busted for "hairdressing without a license."
If I still owned a business, I'd be desperate for an ally within the government that had the power to shut me down or put me in jail for any of thousands of violations or regulations that would take me ten years just to read.
I'm frankly scared that we're getting to the point that life becomes so uncertain and dangerous for anyone who actually tries to do anything interesting that no one will try to do anything interesting anymore except for bureaucrats and criminals. How many more laws will it take, or have we got enough for that already?
A couple of levels of irony here. Not only has this person's home address been posted here, not only have those posts been modded up, not only have people posted suggestions for harassment, assault, and murder of said person for the crime of "making money while being very annoying and probably wasting resources," which have also been modded up, but to ice the cake, we also see posts about how amoral businessmen are!
It's a beautiful day for hypocracy,
A beautiful day for hypocracy,
Won't you be an accomplice?
Maybe this guy Deserves to Lose, at least financially. But if some wacko kills his family, I hope you realize you helped.
Now, to be honest, the chances of someone killing a "spam king" are remote. Wackos generally have more important things to worry about.
Butr it's still pretty pathetic behavior, and the most pathetic part is the relative lack of "and lack of modding of) objections.
Come on, guys. The "spam your congressman" stuff is cool, the "hack away the spam" stuff is cool, the "somebody murder this guy" stuff is ++ uncool.
Okay, so posit for a moment a Logitech wireless keyboard with hacked hardware and firmware and boosted range, and a spotting scope.
:), which would "poll" the PC periodically and re-establish its identity. Which would cause all kinds of havoc if you switched keyboards or someone duped your code.
:)
Park yourself outside of an office, or for that matter several offices, and "try out" some computers some night.
A parabolic antenna might help some?
Now, how do you counter this kind of intrusion, apart from only using wired keyboards?
Perhaps if Logitech started using the kind of tech in 2GHz phones with frequency hopping and/or scrambling? Possibly even something simpler like a frequency change periodically based on an encrypted "handshake" like modern car alarms?
How about simple "exclusive" communications - each keyboard contains a unique identifier (which would then probably be used to track you over the net
There is an answer here... somewhere... apart from not keeping anything worth stealing.
(Keep a PC by the window hooked to the net with a wireless keyboard and tons of pr0n on the HD...)
I will look up Brad Templeton.
I think the basic problem here is what always happens everywhere and everywhen:
A bunch of clever people build something cool. Other people appreciate that.
But not everyone is happy. The clever people apply some cool fixes, and even more people are now into the cool idea.
But not everyone is happy. Now so many unhappy people are involved, the clever people are outnumbered. Sometimes the clever people defensively form an organization. Sometimes the unhappy people form an organization.
It doesn't matter, because within a few years, the unhappy people are running the organization, because that's what unhappy people do. Happy people don't generally find it neccessary, and clever people can't put up with it for long.
So now we find ourselves facing the gradual end of the wild and free Internet we know and love (through this and many other means).
The "What do we do" question is the important one now. If anyone has a more permanent meeting place to discuss this, post it here. Perhaps we need to start building another "common infrastructure" voluntarily alongside the existing one. I admit I have a lot to learn about this.
Anyone here remember fidoNet? No reason we couldn't do it again. I could afford to donate some time and a couple of machines. Who's up for it?